you can’t call yourself a well rounded geomax scholar unless you live somewhere with 0 english

[AlexBrown84]

the geomaxxers of the past had to make due with not being able to communicate with a large majority of the population

to get your full stripes, one must do the same!

 

[AlexBrown84]

nowhere in west europe counts because they’re all colonies of america

 

[AlexBrown84]

maybe i’ll go live in mandalay myanmar to get my no english campaign stripes

 

[fjor2096]

Honestly if you do this and get 'adopted' by a local family there, after 1-2 years you'll basically have a new native language.

 

[biggunsar]

the geomaxxers of the past had to make due with not being able to communicate with a large majority of the population

to get your full stripes, one must do the same!

true dat. i have learned two additional languages that way

 

[biggunsar]

to be honest alex, i have no idea how you learned chinese

i will never be able to learn chinese, thai, cambodian. Any language that does not use the same letters as english.

Russian maybe, cause most letters are the same.

 

[Rance]

to be honest alex, i have no idea how you learned chinese

i will never be able to learn chinese, thai, cambodian. Any language that does not use the same letters as english.

Russian maybe, cause most letters are the same.

Learning characters is not difficult in the sense that it requires you to be intelligent. It just takes a long time. What makes a language difficult is the complexity of grammar, which is why I believe Japanese is considerably more difficult than Chinese, despite Japanese having an "alphabet" while Chinese does not.

Russian is a trap, and very difficult. It has a complex case system with some crazy noun declension rules, complex verb conjugation (tense, aspect, and gender), and context-dependent word order. It shares a lot of similarities with Japanese for these reasons.

Vietnamese would be another trap because it's harder than other Asian languages despite using the Roman alphabet. Six tones. Ouch.

 

[biggunsar]

Learning characters is not difficult in the sense that it requires you to be intelligent. It just takes a long time. What makes a language difficult is the complexity of grammar, which is why I believe Japanese is considerably more difficult than Chinese, despite Japanese having an "alphabet" while Chinese does not.

Russian is a trap, and very difficult. It has a complex case system with some crazy noun declension rules, complex verb conjugation (tense, aspect, and gender), and context-dependent word order. It shares a lot of similarities with Japanese for these reasons.

Vietnamese would be another trap because it's harder than other Asian languages despite using the Roman alphabet. Six tones. Ouch.

you need to learn 10,000 characters to read an average chinese newspaper, so please don't tell me about "you just need to learn characters im smart" bs.

 

[Rance]

you need to learn 10,000 characters to read an average chinese newspaper, so please don't tell me about "you just need to learn characters im smart" bs.

Data source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/utmhikari/doubanmovieshortcomments

Sourced from a movie review dataset, but still representative of common language.

Even Chinese people do not know 10,000 characters unless they are serious scholars who read ancient texts on the regular. Most will know somewhere between 3000 and 5000 characters depending on level of education and how often they read. That being said, this is a geomaxxing forum, and foreigners will not need to know rarely-appearing hanzi, so 2000 is enough for daily life.



You may also find it interesting to look at the number of characters assessed for each level of the HSK. Compare it to the number of utilized words, and the ability description for the level.

 

[Meeks]

Learning characters is not difficult in the sense that it requires you to be intelligent. It just takes a long time. What makes a language difficult is the complexity of grammar, which is why I believe Japanese is considerably more difficult than Chinese, despite Japanese having an "alphabet" while Chinese does not.

How can you say this when Japanese has two alphabet PLUS the Chinese characters

But what makes Chinese harder is it has 5 tones, I find speaking a pronouncing Japanese words to be so easy but Chinese is next level

 

[Rance]

How can you say this when Japanese has two alphabet PLUS the Chinese characters

But what makes Chinese harder is it has 5 tones, I find speaking a pronouncing Japanese words to be so easy but Chinese is next level

Japanese kanji are a beast just like Chinese hanzi are, but the difference is that hiragana and katakana can be used as a crutch in most situations. They're almost like subtitles. You can get by with a smaller number of kanji as a result. With Chinese, you're completely helpless if you can't read the hanzi.

The hiragana and katakana syllabaries themselves are not even worth mentioning in terms of difficulty because they can be learned in under a week.

Chinese pronunciation is super rough to learn, no doubt about that. This is something that will stick with you for a long time, even to the higher levels.

Oh yeah, another thing that Japanese has going for it especially at lower levels is the sheer number of loanwords from English. Even if the primary meaning for a word isn't a loanword, it's probably an alternate. As a result you can attempt to communicate unknown vocabulary words using Japan-ified English and odds are someone will understand you.

 

[Xavist]

How can you say this when Japanese has two alphabet PLUS the Chinese characters

But what makes Chinese harder is it has 5 tones, I find speaking a pronouncing Japanese words to be so easy but Chinese is next level

4 tones actually…
Never mind, 5 with neutral but that doesn’t count as much